Robert Boswell's guest appearances

Robert Boswell

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Karen Joy Fowler

Benjamin Percy

Zadie Smith

Michelle Tea

Matt Bell

Danielle Evans

Dani Shapiro

Anne Lamott

Adam Levin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Mary Gaitskill

Jericho Brown

Alicia Jo Rabins

Ben Marcus

OwlTail

An interview from the archives - complete with the old music! - with Robert Boswell, award-winning author of seven novels, including Tumbledown (Graywolf Press). Robert Boswell published a book on craft in 2008, The Half-Known World. In this book, he details how important it is for writers to give themselves over to what he calls the "half-known world" of fiction, where surprise and meaning converge. Consider this in terms of an exercise: this week's Write the Book Prompt is to think about surprise converging with meaning.  An example of my own: a driver stops at a quick mart due to a mundane but necessary need: coffee, perhaps, or a bathroom break. Who might she meet or run into there? How does this affect her day, or the trip she's embarking on? Did she want to be seen? Has this person affected her life in the past? How will this encounter affect the story?  Consider this week how surprise might come up against meaning in your own work, offering an opportunity to change the narrative in a valuable way.   Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another. Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several former South Burlington High School students, now alums).  727

An interview from the archives - complete with the old music! - with <a href="http://robertboswell.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Robert Boswell,</a> award-winning author of seven novels, including <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781555976866" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tumbledown </a>(<a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/tumbledown" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Graywolf Press)</a>. Robert Boswell published a book on craft in 2008, The Half-Known World. In this book, he details how important it is for writers to give themselves over to what he calls the "half-known world" of fiction, where surprise and meaning converge. Consider this in terms of an exercise: this week's Write the Book Prompt is to think about surprise converging with meaning. An example of my own: a driver stops at a quick mart due to a mundane but necessary need: coffee, perhaps, or a bathroom break. Who might she meet or run into there? How does this affect her day, or the trip she's embarking on? Did she want to be seen? Has this person affected her life in the past? How will this encounter affect the story? Consider this week how surprise might come up against meaning in your own work, offering an opportunity to change the narrative in a valuable way.  Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another. Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several former South Burlington High School students, now alums).  727

Robert Boswell - Archive Interview (4/29/22)

“When most of us think of today’s great American novel, we think of Franzen’s Freedom or Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad—sprawling stories that comment on contemporary society as we live it. Tumbledown, Robert Boswell’s latest, is just such a book—and one you’ll stay up until 3 AM reading. Over the course of a few weeks, James Candler, a 30-something therapist, is about to lose everything including his job at the treatment center, his fiancée, and his underwater house in the suburbs. Whether he actually loses it all becomes less important as the lives of his teenage patients intertwine with his . . . This look at life inside a for-profit mental health facility will make you laugh out loud, then sucker-punch you straight to sorrow . . . Boswell is a writer who can see the humanity, and yes, even beauty, in just about anything, including a lone man sitting at a late-night diner, holding ‘a frosted doughnut to his nose as if it were a flower.'”—Leigh Newman, “Oprah Book of the Week” review The post Robert Boswell : Tumbledown appeared first on Tin House.

“When most of us think of today’s great American novel, we think of Franzen’s Freedom or Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad—sprawling stories that comment on contemporary society as we live it. Tumbledown, Robert Boswell’s latest, is just such a book—and one you’ll stay up until 3 AM reading. Over the course of a few weeks, James Candler, a 30-something therapist, is about to lose everything including his job at the treatment center, his fiancée, and his underwater house in the suburbs. Whether he actually loses it all becomes less important as the lives of his teenage patients intertwine with his . . . This look at life inside a for-profit mental health facility will make you laugh out loud, then sucker-punch you straight to sorrow . . . Boswell is a writer who can see the humanity, and yes, even beauty, in just about anything, including a lone man sitting at a late-night diner, holding ‘a frosted doughnut to his nose as if it were a flower.'”—Leigh Newman, “Oprah Book of the Week” review The post <a href="https://tinhouse.com/podcast/robert-boswell-tumbledown/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Robert Boswell : Tumbledown</a> appeared first on <a href="https://tinhouse.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tin House</a>.

Robert Boswell : Tumbledown